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Little Lord Fauntleroy

Little Lord Fauntleroy is the informal nickname given to an unidentified American boy who was discovered murdered in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on March 8, 1921. The boy was interred on March 17 that year. There was speculation that the child may have been Homer Lemay, who went missing at the same time the body was disposed of. This, however, has never been confirmed.

On March 8,1921, the remains of a boy aged five to seven were found floating in a pond near the O’Laughlin Stone Company in Waukesha, Waukesha County, Wisconsin. He had been struck with a blunt instrument and was then disposed in the local body of water. Despite being dressed in clothing that may have come from a high-class family, no one came forward after the discovery to claim the body. In efforts toward his identification, his body was displayed at a local funeral home. A reward of one thousand dollars was also posted, but did not generate any information. His clothes consisted of a gray sweater, Munsing underwear, black stockings, a blouse and leather shoes. He had blond hair and brown eyes with a cherubic face and a missing tooth from his jaw. The boy could have been in the water for several months.

A man, an employee for the O’Laughlin company, claimed that he had been approached by a couple five weeks before the body was found. The woman, who wore a red sweater, requested to know if the man had seen a young boy. She was reportedly upset and the man accompanying her was seen watching the area where the child was located. They later left in a Ford vehicle and have never been located since that time. A possible scenario for the case is that Little Lord Fauntleroy may have been abducted from a wealthy family in another location and disposed somewhere else to prevent his identification. After the investigation halted, money was raised by a local woman, Minnie Conrad, for the child to be buried at the Prairie Home cemetery, in Waukesha. She was later buried in the same cemetery in 1940 after she died at the age of seventy-three.

It was reported that there were sightings of a woman wearing a heavy veil who would occasionally place flowers on the boy’s grave and may have possibly known who he was when he was alive.In 1949, a medical examiner from Milwaukee, Wisconsin suggested after learning that investigators felt that there may have been a connection between the unidentified boy and Homer Lemay, a six-year-old who disappeared around the same time the child died. Lemay was said, by his father, Edmond, to have died in a vehicle accident during a trip in South America when he was being cared for by family friends (described as the “Nortons”), but there was no existing record of his death. Edmond Lemay stated that he learned of his son’s death after receiving information from a South American newspaper that detailed the accident. He also was accused of falsifying his wife’s signature while she was missing, but was later found to not be guilty. Detectives were unable to find any information about such an event or even the existence of the two Nortons.